I now have run into a couple of cases in which my Apple Mail (from my me.com email address) to friends has bounced due to the fact that “the IP address has been used for a lot of spam”. I wonder if this is because Private Relay is turned on - though I don’t understand wy the relay would use “bad” IP addresses.
David
I don’t think Private Relay works that way. I think it would tunnel your traffic (including mail) from your device to Apple’s SMTP server, and then from there it is like any other iCloud mail.
If so, the most likely explanation is someone is pushing spam through iCloud’s SMTP servers, and the one you’re using (which is out of your control) is the one that is being detected as the source of spam.
All you can do is contact Apple support. Or use an alternate SMTP server, if you have one, until the problem is cleared up.
Thanks. It only has happened twice and to people who have received email from me before. This last time I was sending an email with a link to an article in the Washington Post - and maybe that link (for an old article) was routed through a bad IP address.
David
There are many anti-spam lists of blocked servers. Sometimes a legitimate server (like Apple, but also Google, Facebook and countless others) gets added to one of these lists and then lots of legitimate mail gets blocked by sites that subscribe to the lists.
If it’s a major server, their admins will usually be able to contact the list owners and fix the problem relatively quickly. If it’s a smaller (or corporate or personal) server, it may take a lot longer, depending on what kind of hoops the list owners want you to jump through to prove you’re not actually a spammer.
Some list owners have reasonable procedures, and some are completely unreasonable (and will often accuse you of being a spammer and permanently block your domain if you dare to complain about their policies).